'Squadron 42' Nearly Finished, But Not Ready For Release In 2016

At Cloud Imperium Games’ (CIG) annual CitizenCon event, CEO Chris Roberts provided an update to Squadron 42, the standalone, single-player experience that is separate from Star Citizen. Even though work on Squadron 42 is near completion, it seems like we won’t get to play the game this year.

In terms of content, Roberts said that all of the game’s chapters and gameplay are at the “grey-box” level, which means that development is nearly complete, but the last set of assets aren’t included yet, and the developers want to give it a final polish.
There are also some technical issues to solve throughout the game. This includes full animation integration, combat logic, flight AI, and of course, optimizations for a plethora of CPUs and GPUs.

However, CIG plans to show off a portion of the finished product soon. Roberts said that the team will take one chapter of the game to what he considers to be the final shipping quality. Not only does this give fans another sneak peek at the game, but it also helps the developers eliminate any technical or polishing issues.

Squadron 42 initially started as small part of the Star Citizenexperience. However, it eventually peeled off from the base game and expanded into its current state. The final product is split into 28 chapters with over 60 missions. Players will see 40 different types of spacecraft as they progress through the story, and they’ll be able to participate in ship-to-ship combat in outer space as well as in the atmosphere of the surrounding planets.

Squadron 42 also boasts a cast of Hollywood stars such as Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, and Mark Hamill. Obviously, the production value is high, thanks to numerous pledges from players (you can still contribute to the project on the game’s website), all of whom want to see their investment culminate into CIG’s first finished title.